10th TEAN Conference Celebrating the Inspiration of the Professional Teacher Educator

Presented by the Teacher Education Advancement Network, in association with Critical Publishing.

The 10th TEAN Conference was a celebration of the inspiration of the professional teacher educator. It took place at Conference Aston, Birmingham. This was the 8th time at Conference Aston, a venue enjoyed by our delegates over the years.

TEAN Commendation for Effective Practice in Teacher Education

This was our fourth year of the commendation award. Many thanks to all who sent in entries. We again received some excellent ideas for effective practice. Following the anonymous review process, there two winning entries this year.

The first of these was a joint submission from

Paty Paliokosta and Theresa Nash - Kingston University and St. George's, University of London

for their Fighting for our Rights project. Paty and Theresa could not be with us on the day, but were thrilled to be winners.

TEAN Commendation for Effective Practice in Teacher Education

The other winning entry of the TEAN Commendation award 2019 was sent in by Adrian Copping from the University of Cumbria for his entry entitled: 'Mind the 'perceived' gap. To find out what gap he is referring to, open his winning entry here. Professor Linda Clarke, our keynote on the Friday morning of the conference presented Adrian with his commemorative plaque.

Eline Vanassche Keynote

The opening keynote address of the conference was given by Prof. Dr. Eline Vanasche from the University of Leuven, Belgium. Elinespoke to us about 'Ways of seeing (and not seeing) teacher educator professionalism'. In her useful and thought-provoking address Eline suggested to us many examples of teacher educator professionalism and spoke to us of the danger of the possible dominance of one way of seeing standards for teacher education. She mapped out how professional standards 'see' the professionalism of teacher educators and then went on to complicate this way of seeing. In one section of her address, Eline presented the notion of Enacted Professionalism for us to consider through four central questions:

What happens?

Why is this happening?

What do we think of this and why?

Should we try to change this practice and which would this change be an improvement?

She completed her talk with the tantalising suggestion that 'Every way of seeing is a way of not seeing'!

Biographical notes for Eline Vanassche

Until 1st December 2018 Eline Vanassche was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at the University of East London. She is a former Assistant Professor at Maastricht University and Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Leuven where she was awarded her PhD in Education. Her research focusses on the nature of teacher educators’ professionalism and its development throughout their careers. She has a particular interest in understanding the complex interactions between teacher educators and the socio-institutional contexts of their work. Dr. Vanassche was amongst the first researchers in Europe to raise and address the need for research focusing directly on teacher educators in a scholarly way. Her decision proved defining, and research in this field has proliferated over the past decade. She is a founding member of the International Forum for Teacher Educator Development (InFo-TED, https://info-ted.eu) and has authored a significant number of publications in academic journals and books.

Dr Vanassche accepted a prestigious Professorship at the University of Leuven in Belgium and began her new role on 1st December 2018.

Linda Clarke Keynote

Our second keynote was Professor Linda Clarke from Ulster University. Linda's theme was 'The Professional Place of Teacher Educators'. She suggested to us that many animals learn, but only humans teach and only teacher educators teach to teach. In a most thought-provoking way she asked us to consider professionalism with care, drawing on Bourdieu and Waquant (1992, p.342) who presented the idea that 'We should not even use the term ‘professional’: professional is a folk concept which has been smuggled into scientific language'. She also drew on Eliot Friedman to refer to 'professional' as a 'slippery term' before presenting her 'Place Model' which you can epxlore further in her book published by Critical Publishing: Clarke, L. (2016) Teacher Status and Professional Learning, Northwich: Critical Publishing. Linda finished with 'A more positive utopian view of 'Inclusive Professionals''.

Linda Clarke was born in Brooklyn, New York, moving to Northern Ireland in early childhood. She served as a Geography teacher and head of department for 15 years. Her Masters degree is in Education Technology and her PhD examines the use of Elearning in Initial Teacher Education. She was appointed as a lecturer in Education at Ulster University and served as Head of the School of Education at Ulster from 2009 to 2013. Linda was the northern chair of the cross-border body for teacher education – the Standing Conference for Teacher Education, North and South (SCoTENS 2013-2016). She is Co-convener of the BERA SIG for Teacher Education and Development. Linda is Chair of the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers in Northern Ireland. She is a member of the Editorial Board of Technology, Pedagogy and Education and a reviewer for several key education journals. Linda has recently worked to develop an innovative, interdisciplinary Model, the Place Model which uses two senses of place (status and learning journey) to conceptualise the dystopias and ideals of professionals –It featured as a Guest Blog on The Good Project's website - you can access the article (with a preface from Howard Gardner) here:

Abstract Book

After the keynotes on each day, delegates were treated to a wide range of presentations – a veritable feast of teacher education! Many thanks to all presenters for the time they gave in preparing their presentations to help create a successful conference. If you would like any of the presentation material used, please contact alison.jackson@cumbria.ac.uk to check on its availability.

10 years of TEAN

This year TEAN celebrates 10 years. In that time there have been 10 conferences, countless small events, 19 issues of the TEAN journal and 12 issues of the TEAN journal. Thank you to all our professional community to all they have given to make TEAN such a success.